


and malt does more than milton can

by lovetincture



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26742583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Losing your religion is a bitch. A theological crisis at 4 a.m.
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	and malt does more than milton can

**Author's Note:**

> _And malt does more than Milton can_   
>  _To justify God's ways to man_
> 
> -from "A Shropshire Lad" by A.E. Housman

Sam wakes in the middle of the night, breathing hard. It takes some time to get his breathing under control, longer still for his heart to calm to a more sedate rhythm. He drags a hand over his face, blinking in the dark.

He lies there until the dark starts to make him feel itchy, crawling over his hands and mouth like a living thing. He sits up without turning on a lamp and pads into the silent hallway.

Cas is sitting on the steps to the library. There’s an open bottle by his feet. Whiskey, mostly empty. Sam stops in the doorway.

“Cas?”

“Hello, Sam.” Castiel sounds sober. Sam drifts closer, close enough to smell the potent odor wafting off him.

“You smell like a bar.”

“Yes,” Cas says, lifting the bottle and pausing it halfway to his mouth. He holds it out and examines it. “I have been drinking… a lot.”

“You getting anywhere with that?”

Cas tilts his head, and now Sam can see it—the muzzily unfocused eyes, the sloping, unhappy mouth. “Kind of.”

Sam considers walking on by, getting his glass of water and leaving him to it. He probably wouldn’t fall back asleep, even if he tried, but it’s the kind of night when he wants to crawl into the dark, private embrace of his own space—to lick his wounds in peace. Still, something stops his feet. A fleeting, momentary twitch of an impulse. Sam goes with it. He snags a new bottle of whiskey from the wet bar, sticks his thumb in a crystal glass along with it, and sits next to Cas.

Cas budges over without a word, making room for Sam. Sam pours himself a drink.

“You’re up early,” Cas says.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Do the nightmares still trouble you?”

Sam swallows around a mouthful of whiskey, savoring the chemical burn. “Sometimes. Not tonight.”

Cas nods. They sit and drink.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sam asks.

Cas considers. “Not really.”

They sit, and they drink. The whiskey has a soporific effect, blunting the hard edges of Sam’s world. He considers that he could probably get to sleep now, if he tried. He hasn’t been sleeping lately, and he could use it. He tips the last of his glass into his mouth, and he’s about to get up, hand bracing on the steps and thigh muscles tensing to rise when Cas speaks again.

“Chuck,” he says, and the tone of voice says it all.

Sam sits back down again. “Fucking Chuck.”

“All my life,” Cas says haltingly, “I have served heaven. I was created for a purpose, to serve my Father’s perfect order.” Sam can practically hear the capitalization on the word Father, the same way capital-G God still wants to roll off his tongue. Cas’ lip curls in a sneer at the word. “The reality is disappointing.”

Sam doesn’t know what to say to that. He could point out that Cas abandoned God’s order years ago. He could point out that they’re all living in a bunker, that their policy on angels has more or less been ‘kill on sight’ for years. All of it somehow seems too mean-spirited in the low, buzzy glow of the hall lights. “Yep.”

He sighs and unscrews the bottle of whiskey again. He pours himself another few inches. Hands the open bottle to Cas.

“What would you do if it was different?” he asks after a while. “If God was everything you thought he would be, what would it change?”

Cas takes a morose swig. Looks up at the ceiling—habits of millennia die hard, Sam figures. Cas looks back at him, bleary-eyed. Having found no answers. “I would be living in an elegant universe. That feels like it has some worth, or the refutation of it wouldn’t feel so much like loss.”

Sam sits with that. He doesn’t feel it—not in the same way. He never believed in an orderly universe, but there’s something universal about the disappointment of realizing God is nothing more than a two-bit bully.

“I used to pray,” Sam says. “I’d pray for my dad. For Dean.”

“I know.”

“I used to think—hope, I don’t know. I hoped someone was up there, listening. I wanted to believe.” He shakes his head. “Not knowing was better. The hope—that was better.”

“Would you go back if you could? To not knowing.”

Sam has to think about it. “No,” he says at last. “I don’t think so. It’s better to know, isn’t it? Not knowing doesn’t make the monsters any less deadly. Not knowing doesn’t make God any less of a dick.”

That startles a laugh out of Cas, a short, sharp bark that has him choking on a mouthful of liquor and sputtering on it onto hallowed Men of Letters tile. Sam cracks a smile and pounds him on the back.

“God is a dick,” Cas says, trying out the blasphemy.

“Sure is,” Sam agrees.

They sit and drink until they hear a door open and close down a hallway, the sounds of the bunker coming back to life. Sam feels woozy, his head stuffed with the manic energy of sleep deprivation and a bellyful of booze. He leans into Cas’ side, feels him sturdy and warm beside him, and Cas doesn’t move away.

“Fucking Chuck,” Cas says.

“Fucking Chuck.”

**Author's Note:**

> Fuck Chuck.
> 
> [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture)


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